Following our explainer about the Board of Education’s illegitimate at-large elections, I received additional information on the matter from Delegate Marc Korman (D-Montgomery County).
In addition to House Bill 0655 introduced by Delegate Brian M. Crosby (D-St. Mary’s), our very own MoCo House delegation recently introduced HB0380 to mandate district voting for the BoE’s district representatives.
To me, this indicates that everyone, including the county’s Democratic leadership, knows the BoE is nothing more than a group of vote diluters, violating everyone’s voting rights for the benefit of a few aggressive special interests who themselves are not very popular.
The vote in the House is ours, it’s a matter of getting the legislation through the Senate in Annapolis. The BoE has very few friends, and just a little pressure from the voters will put the entire matter behind us.
You can take action through 2 different methods:
- Lend your support by signing a petition started on Change.org. After signing it, make sure to share it with your friends, family and on your social media accounts.
- Send an email to the Montgomery County House Delegation expressing your concern over the lack of representation allowed through current BoE elections. To make this easier we have included the email address as well as draft language for the body of the email.
Email: MontgomeryCounty.HouseDelegation@mlis.state.md.us
Body:
Montgomery County’s Board of Education is comprised of all at-large representatives even though five of them deceptively “represent” individual districts. This is a voting rights violation that many civil rights leaders have been denouncing since the 1960s.
Please place a priority on passing House Bill 0655 and House Bill 0380 to put an end to district-level representatives from being elected at-large.
